Tag Archives: For Immediate Release

In episode 533 of the For Immediate Release podcast, Shel Holtz provides a remarkably lucid and convincing defense of companies and organizations creating Facebook fan pages. This was in response to comments from members of the FIR Friendfeed room predicting the end of commercial fan pages on Facebook.

Shel points out that many fan pages are indeed ineffective, because the creators have clearly not put much thought into why people might want to come visit the page. One of the main reasons customers give for visiting a fan page is to find out about special deals and offers. Like this one from Starbucks, which was in my Facebook newsfeed this morning.

Of course, there are other reasons people interested in an organization or brand might become a fan and be motivated to return to the page regularly. As Shel points out, patients with chronic illnesses might become a fan of their local hospital to learn about seminars that help them to manage their condition. It’s not hard to imagine other reasons as well. A local retailer could keep its customers up to date on sales or the arrival of a hot new product. Museums could announce new exhibits, or alert people to slow days when popular exhibits might be less crowded. Presuming not everyone buys their books on Amazon, a local book seller could let literary types know when a new novel was in stock or its author would be appearing for a reading and book signing.

The point of course is that a successful fan page starts with the consumer. What do they need, what might be of value to them, how could a Facebook fan page help?

Another aspect is particularly important. Companies and organizations can of course feed this information to people elsewhere on line, through their own web sites or email, for example But that demands more effort and time than most people have today. It has to occur to them to go to the web site, they need to take the time to remember your URL or find it in their “favorites” list, or consciously decide to click on your email vs. all the others that are cluttering their mailbox. For more and more people, Facebook is where they are anyway. And when they’ve opted in to your fan page, you are there with them, because everything you announce shows up in their news feed. They don’t have to go to your information, your information goes to them — automatically.

Which brings me to the last point. Most of us don’t have our eyes constantly glued to our Facebook news feed. The same goes for Twitter. Facebook should create a “search and save” tool, like an RSS feeder, but for Facebook posts. It would have a function that allows you to enter the names of the fan pages from whom you would like to receive posts, and then automatically collects those posts for you to review at a time that’s convenient, with the reassurance that you didn’t miss the latest big deal or event. I’m not aware of a tool like this, either on Facebook or Twitter, where it would also make sense. Do you know of one?

Recently a debate emerged among German social media mavens. The question was whether social media can be successful when companies that use social media channels don’t respond to consumer comments or otherwise enter the conversation. The debate was ushered in by a post from Mirko Lange on his talkabout blog entitled, Social Media Myth Buster: Successful Social Media Doesn’t Require a “Dialog” (Social Media Myth Buster: Es braucht keinen “Dialog” für erfolgreiche Social Media).

Two aspects of Mirko’s post bugged me. First, he was fairly unspecific about defining “successful.” It seemed simply to be the number of fans on Facebook or the number of followers on Twitter. So one of his successful examples was Lufthansa Germany’s Twitter page. Lufthansa has 20,000+ followers. Is that a success? Perhaps. Some context would help. How fast was the growth in followers? How many of those followers actually engage with Lufthansa via Twitter? On the face of it, it doesn’t look that good compared to Southwest Airlines, which has over 1 million Twitter followers.

The other point is that as far as I can tell, Lufthansa is indeed “dialoging” with customers via Twitter, much the way Frank Eliason has done with Comcast Cares, by identifying customers with problems and helping out. One difference is that Frank identifies himself by name to leverage a key strength of social media, the opportunity for companies to behave like people, by having real people with real names engage on behalf of the company. As Southwest’s Twitter bio aptly notes, ” Airplanes can’t type so @ChristiDay and @Brandy_King are piloting the Twitterverse!”

Nevertheless, I fundamentally agree with Mirko, as well as with Timo Lommatzsch, who, on the current edition of his Social Media PReview Podcast, which discusses Mirko’s post, points to the example of Die Zeit’s Twitter page, with nearly 25,000 followers. Die Zeit is an erudite German weekly newspaper that covers a broad range of topics including politics, culture, economy and sports. There’s no dialogue on their Twitter feed, it serves merely to inform followers of the online edition’s latest articles. But one can imagine that these followers are the type of people who will retweet a post on Die Zeit to all of their followers, which is an effective way to spread the paper’s content across personal networks and potentially bring new readers to the site to the delight of the publication’s online advertisers.

Consider also that consumers aren’t as puritanical about demanding dialogue as social media “experts” assert. I recall recently a study quoted by Shel Holtz on his For Immediate Release podcast. It found that the main reason people become fans of brand Facebook pages is to find special deals and price-off promotions.

As long as a social media provides value based on how the community defines it — be it special deals, product information, help with problems, or the pleasure of sharing one’s passion for the brand with others — the community will grow.

In writing this post, I remembered something I included in the “Who’s on the soapbox?” section when I started this blog in July, 2008. It said, “I’m Steve Rothman … I have a passion for new media, social media, web 2.0 — whatever your preferred label for the way people are using the web to connect, share and empower each other on the things they care about. And that includes the products and services they buy.” I didn’t write that those people necessarily had to include the company or the brand. That’s as true now, as it was then.

Steve Rubel is SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, and a social media and marketing thought leader. I respect him tremendously. But when interviewed recently by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson on their podcast For Immediate Release, he said something that disturbed me profoundly. He mentioned that he had given up his standard blog and was now only micro-blogging. The reason, he said, was that people no longer have the time to read.

He’s wrong. It’s not that people no longer have the time to read. It’s that they no longer have the desire to read. Because they don’t think it’s important. That’s disturbing.

But what’s even more disturbing is the apparent readiness of thought leaders in social media to accept this fact and by words and deeds to further encourage it. When instead they should be leading the discussion that this is something we should perhaps be concerned about.

Why be concerned?

Because ideas, analysis and opinion usually require more than 140 characters. Because a successful society needs a citizenry that can think, and evaluate the validity of an argument. I’m not saying that every member of the population needs to make The Journal of Foreign Affairs his or her favorite Sunday afternoon reading. But I do think the greater the number of people who are at least capable of reading an article in The New York Times from start to finish, without becoming confused or disinterested, the better it will be for our country and the world in general.

Democratization of the creation and distribution of information is great, but what good is it if we’re creating a generation of information consumers that is intellectually incapable of separating the informational wheat from the chaff?

Unfortunately, by word and deed, there’s much that goes on in the web 2.0 world that I’m concerned may be breeding a generation of dummies.

Words and deeds that bother me

Our infatuation with all things visual vs. written word

Don’t get me wrong. I love YouTube as much as the next man. But although pictures may speak louder than words, they don’t necessarily speak more intelligently. My concern has less to do with video itself – after all, there is fantastic video content on TED Talks – but that so much video favors the superficial, the snackable. With people becoming seduced by the endless amount superficial, snackable video out there, they are developing an appetite for content, and only for content, that is the intellectual equivalent of cotton candy. And soon their systems won’t be capable of digesting anything else. The philosopher said Cogito ergo sum — I think, therefore I am, not I snack, therefore I am.

I also believe, though I have no scientific evidence to prove it, that there is a greater depth of involvement with information when we take the time and apply the concentration required to read something. We also may stop, and ponder a paragraph, before reading further, which we’re less likely to do when watching video.

Does anyone talk about quality vs. quantity anymore? We’re all suffering from information overload. But the sad thing is that a good deal of the overload is sifting the garbage from the stuff worth engaging with. How about posting a little less, and thinking a little more?

Giving in to the lowest common denominator

This is what Steve Rubel has done. And when a thought leader like Steve does it, it’s doubly concerning. It’s what the TV network news stations did two decades ago, turning organizations that had formerly helped to inform and intellectually empower a nation into a mirror in which the nation’s most unflattering features were merely reflected.

The dismissal of learning for learning’s sake

Lately I’ve heard buzz among social media “thought leaders” about the worthlessness of a college education. “Nothing that I learned in college prepared me for what I do to day.” The first thing I would say to that is, if most of what you’re doing today are the kinds of things I’ve written about above, then that reflects more poorly on you than your college education.

I would agree that there is much I learned in college that is no longer relevant to what I do today. But the most important things I learned are more relevant than ever. I learned how to think, I learned the importance of investigating opposing points of view, I learned critical analysis, and I learned to value intellectual integrity.

And as far as the “no longer relevant” things are concerned, that’s beside the point. College was a time of exploration and discovery, of things I might learn and become, and things I wouldn’t. I am thankful that I had that opportunity, an opportunity many never have the privilege to enjoy.

What we can do?

Well for one, we can start talking, as I am in this post. And encourage further conversation. The more we talk and discuss, the more this discussion will spread. And if it even gets one person to start thinking about the importance of getting a complete picture on an issue, reading different points of view about it, or in general just taking the time to read and be exposed to different ideas and perspectives, and thinking critically and thoroughly about stuff – well that’s a good thing.

I wish more of us would resist the temptation to post, post, post – flooding the blogosphere, Twittersphere etc. with endless streams of information, half of it bogus, self-promoting, superficial or simply spam. Post when you have something useful to say, or found something that you have taken the the time to read and come to a conclusion as to whether it’s really worth spreading or not. If not, use that time posting for something more worthwhile — like reading.

Break free from you own compulsion to read and follow everything and everyone. My God, how can you possibly follow more than a few hundred people on Twitter and not feel overwhelmed. Be selective, be critical, take the time to really read what people are sharing with you and make decisions about which of those people are really worth hearing from.

Keep blogging, and podcasting, not just micro-blogging. Big ideas, themes and points of view require more than 140 characters. If all we feed our audiences is the equivalent of intellectual cotton candy, then we are accessories to the crime of turning their minds into mush.

Finally, talk about this. Share your thoughts with others. The more people talk about this, the more we can help to create a web 2.0 culture that still values quality of thought and writing, intellectual discipline and integrity, and validation of sources, facts and information. And to cultivate a web 2.0 community that doesn’t simply surf, snack and spread, but thinks, analyzes and informs.

On a recent episode of the podcast For Immediate Release, Neville Hobson interviewed Richard Binhammer, who manages Dell’s social media efforts. Richard mentioned two things that place Dell Outlet’s use of Twitter in context and strengthen the case for Twitter as a marketing tool in this specific instance.

First, Dell Outlet is a small division and doesn’t have much of a marketing budget. The cost of marketing via Twitter costs virtually nothing. (Pun intended!)

Second, Dell Outlet has a business model that makes Twitter the perfect communications tool. It sells discounted computer products and systems that have been used and refurbished, or were left over from canceled orders, or are the equivalents of “seconds,” that is, hardware that has some kind of cosmetic fault that doesn’t affect its performance.

Apparently the business model doesn’t allow for holding on to inventory. When stuff gets returned, even if it’s as few as 5 laptops, Dell Outlet has to move product fast. They can’t afford to have excess inventory clogging up the system. “I can’t think of any other venue in which we can do that,” Richard says. Even relatively short newspaper lead times take too much time. (Oh yes, and newspaper advertising costs money.)

This case raises an important point. Everyone keeps asking the question, can Twitter and other social media communities be used effectively for business. The answer is, “It depends.” It depends on the business model. It depends on the product. It depends on the community, why that community has come together, what each individual hopes to get from being there.

Dell Outlet on Twitter is just one of many ways Dell uses, and continues to pioneer, social media for business. For other Dell activities on Twitter and links to other Dell social media endeavors, go to this page.